End of Year Reflection

Our time in high school is already coming to an end :')

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Independent Film Research Experience

This past year, as well as the year prior, I felt that one of my strengths in approaching the research required for this class were the resources I had available to me. The veritable library of film history books and cinematic journals that Mr. Bigue provides in the classroom are a huge help in researching filmic topics and formulating and reinforcing the theses that are the foundations of our research pieces. Furthermore, Mr. Bigue himself is also extremely knowledgeable on a number of relevant topics and, when approached with specific questions, is almost invariably capable of providing some sort of support. And the great help we get from the Big B is without even mentioning the vast databases of online resources available to us.

That said, I felt like we could have received much more personal help from Mr. Bigue. While he, again, was more often than not able to help his students when asked for help, the problem was just that: he only helped us when asked. Now, he took some steps up this year from last year -- he assigned rough draft deadlines for research-based works and held small discussions with individuals regarding their topics of research, yet I still felt like I could have been aided more. Perhaps Mr. Bigue could schedule more due dates for future students; a talk about topics, then a discussion on details, a review of rough drafts, then a final date for final drafts. Not only would these have helped developed my work but they also could have motivated me not to procrastinate, the latter of which I'm certain has afflicted many, many, many, many of Mr. Bigue's students.

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Oral Presentation Experience

As aforementioned, the resources made available by Mr. Bigue and by Capuchino High School made the process of researching for the oral presentation much easier and much more streamlined than it could have been. Furthermore, and this applies to my Independent Film Research experience as well, we were helped much by Mr. Bigue's choices of films to show us in class. The films he has shown us in class all helped us to develop the necessary skills of analysis, examination, and making connections between works. Watching and discussing films in class helped us to hone and sharpen our abilities sufficiently to perform strongly in our preparations for and during the executions of our orals. Additionally, Mr. B has a large volume of films that he is willing and able to copy to disc and allow students to view for their orals.

For as well as I'm sure we all performed on our orals, I do wish that Mr. Bigue had been able to help us more on organizing our research. I personally was able to find a plethora of viable pieces of information to speak on in my oral, yet lost confidence in myself as I was unsure of how to format and order my discussion. Now, he did give us a sheet listing all of the topics we were to make sure we brought up, however I felt this acted as more of a checklist than a form of organization. I'm certain that, with the help of Mr. Bigue on organization, my oral would have received a more solid six than the light six he made reference to at the end of my oral.

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Production Experience

Even taking into consideration the "fun" experiences (sarcasm?) that were the Independent Research Script and the Oral Presentation, I have no qualms or hesitation with saying that the Production portion of the IB Film course was by far my and probably a majority of the class's favorite part of the curriculum. This past semester, as a representation of the culmination of all of the filmmaking techniques and processes we had learned and gradually become more and more skilled at, my crew and I created Hot Coffee. On this production, and on the last three of our four total during the course, I served as the director. I feel that Hot Coffee is the pinnacle of both my own and our collective abilities, here of course meaning my ability to direct the production of the film. I also feel I made strong contributions during pre-production, adding my insight and creativity to the origin and development of the concept and helping to write the treatments, the scripts and the two-column.

While I'm sad to say that, regarding improvements to be made on in my productions, the future appears bleak (what with me graduating and all haha), I can say there are some lessons I wish that I had learned prior to Hot Coffee. The main thing, and this has been something of a running theme with the productions by my crew, is that I wish we all could have learned how to better manage our time. Literally every single one of the projects with which I've been associated, including not only short films but documentaries and broadcast segments and even the papers and written works we had to turn in, have seen me come down to the wire -- more often than not, until the wee hours of the night before -- to complete them. I suggest that Mr. Bigue implement more due dates for incoming students, with the idea being that if he checks up with them frequently on long-term assignment, he'll essentially be forcing them not to procrastinate while also being able to maintain quality control on their work. A further incentive he could use for the students as a complement to his own motive would be to make the check-ups worth class points; their grades will suffer if they do not stay motivated.